Aftershocks
by littledaybreaker
Summary: 8 years after his accident, Jason begins having seizures. (warning: character death)


A/N: I'm having a tiny bit of trouble with _Runaways_ so I'm taking a brief break—next chapter will be up before Christmas but I didn't have the energy to write it and apparently I just needed to fall back on my old standby of _everything is horrible and everybody dies_. My favorite. The title refers to the idea that the seizures are "aftershocks" of Jason's old injury, but it also refers a little to the end of the story. Yep. Also, timeline-wise this takes place about 3ish years after the end of the series-Noah is 5 at the beginning.

_These things inside me, they repeat like broken records_

_Spinning pretty somethings behind my eyes_

_And when I can't look at you, I can paint your picture perfectly in my mind_

_And when I get old, I'm gonna miss you all the time._

~Ryan Adams, Friends

The first time Jason had a seizure, Tim was laying in bed with him.

It was nothing _gay, _of course, they had just kind of piled in there to watch TV, and Jason had fallen asleep but Tim had stayed awake, nursing his beer and daydreaming. He had just been about to doze off—in that place between asleep and awake where the world seems somewhat hallucinogenic—when he felt Jason start to vibrate. "Jay?" he mumbled, looking over at him, thinking maybe he was trying to get out of bed.

It was over nearly as soon as Tim had registered that it had begun—Jason stopped shaking, woke up, blinking like a confused little boy, and then drifted back off to sleep as if nothing had happened. Maybe he'd imagined it. Switching off the TV, he leaned back against the pillows, taking deep breaths until he could relax into sleep.

Years ago it had been his worst nightmare. For weeks after the accident, he had woke up every morning in a cold sweat, convinced that Jason had died in his sleep. But as the years went by and Jason stayed alive, stayed healthy—healthier than Tim, probably—he started to forget about it. Started to forget that Street's wheels were only the tip of the iceberg, that his entire nervous system was permanently altered. He'd let himself breathe, let himself love Jason unquestioningly the way he had their whole lives. Nothing could happen. They were invincible.

The second time Jason had a seizure, Tim found him.

They'd made plans to take Noah to Chuck E Cheese before he went back to New Jersey for the summer, and Tim was supposed to pick them up at 2:30. When they still hadn't emerged from the apartment at 2:45, he knocked on the door.

Noah stuck his head around the door and waved. "Uncle Tim? I need help."

"Noah, my man." Tim stuck out his hand for a fist bump. "What's up, little buddy?"

"Daddy's sleeping and he won't wake up."

Tim felt his heart drop in his chest. "What? What did you say, Noah?"

Noah took him by the hand and led him into the bedroom, where Jason was slumped over in his chair, jaw slack. His chest was rising and falling, thank God, _thank God_. "Six," Tim said, shaking his shoulder. "Six, wake up." Shook him again. "Wake up, come on buddy. We're gonna go to Chuck E Cheese. Wake up. Wake up!"

When Jason finally did open his eyes, he blinked like a kid again, but this time he didn't fall back to sleep. "What happened?"

Tim hesitated. "I don't know, man, you had a little nap there." It wasn't technically a lie.

Jason shook his head, blinking a few times more. "I don't remember," he said, and then turned his head away, embarrassed. "Let's go, come on guys."

The third time Jason had a seizure, Tim took him to the hospital.

They sat for hours in the waiting room. Every hour or so Tim would go out to the vending machine and bring Jason a new treat of some kind—Skittles, a bag of chips, a bottle of Coke. He claimed it was to keep himself from getting bored. It was really because he didn't want Jason to see him crying.

The doctors poked and prodded him, scanned his brain and hooked him up to an EEG, and eventually came back and told them that they didn't know what it was.

"They're not epileptic, it's probably some sort of neurological damage from the old injury. It shouldn't be anything serious. Take care now, y'all."

The fourth time Jason had a seizure, he asked Tim if they could move in with him.

"I just need to know Noah will be okay."

"Yeah," said Tim, "Of course."

He spent five days making his house as accessible as possible without telling a soul—not even Billy, although he couldn't put his finger on why. There was nothing shameful about looking out for your best friend.

They moved in on a Saturday afternoon, and that night, once Noah was tucked into his new race car bed and had been read 6 billion stories and been given 6 billion and one goodnight kisses and made 6 billion and two requests for water, they ended up piled into Tim's bed again, nursing beers and watching TV.

"Thank you," Jason said, after they'd sat there in silence for most of an old episode of MadTV.

Tim looked at him for a long while and finally reached for him, pressing their lips together wordlessly.

He had expected Jason to pull back, to look horrified, to get back into his chair and go away and never come back. He wasn't even sure why he'd done it to begin with—it hadn't even felt like his own hands, his own mouth. He didn't regret it, and he knew he wouldn't even if Jason hadn't kissed back. But Jason kissed back.

There were no seizures that night.

The fifth time Jason had a seizure, it was Christmas Eve.

They were alone in the house—Billy and Mindy and the kids had left, and Jason's parents wouldn't be by until the next day. There was a fire in the fireplace and they were sprawled on the couch (well, as sprawled as they could be—Jason with his head in Tim's lap—and it felt like the closest to normal Tim had ever felt. Even being with Lyla hadn't felt this close to being at home.

He had been just about to say it—just about to stop being a damn pussy about his feelings for once—when Jason's body went rigid, his eyes rolled back, and he shook. Relaxed. Shook again. Went limp. One-two-three-four. Tim held his breath, stroked his hair, waited for him to come back. And waited.

Jason opened his eyes and blinked sleepily. "Again?" he asked, and Tim nodded.

"Fuck," he said under his breath, and Tim rubbed his head a little bit more, as if he was a small animal that needed to be soothed.

"It's okay," Tim said, "you're okay, Six."

"I love you," Jason said breathlessly, sounding like he was going to cry. "I don't know if that's okay, but I do."

Tim tried to suppress his smile, leaning down, kissing Jason on the mouth. "I love you too, Jay. I really do."

Everything was okay. Everything would be okay. Tim began to relax again.

The sixth time Jason had a seizure, it was his last.

It had been three years since that Christmas Eve, and they'd settled into the kind of quiet almost-marriage that only two boys who had loved each other their whole lives and had spent nearly as much of that time trying to deny it. They worked and cooked and kissed and fooled around, they drank beers and played with Noah. It was the most peaceful Tim had ever felt, and he should have known that it wouldn't last.

They had just dropped Noah off at the airport for another summer with Erin, had driven into town and picked up a couple pizzas and went home. They had eaten and fooled around and drank a couple beers and then assumed the position—Jason with his head in his lap, Tim with his hands in his hair.

"I love you," Jason murmured, sounding half asleep—dreamy. "I've never loved anyone as much as I love you. 'Cept Noah."

"I love you," Tim murmured back, kissing the top of his head. "I never thought I'd ever get to say that."

"Now you can say it every day if you want."

"Yep." Tim smiled, a giddy feeling overtaking him. "Yep, I can."

"Best feeling in the world," Jason said, and drifted off to sleep.

Tim was almost asleep too when he felt Jason stir, then freeze, then jerk. He shook himself awake, petting Jason's hair, taking deep breaths, waiting it out. Jerk. Freeze. Jerkjerkjerkjerk…freeze. One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten. Nothing. "Jay? Hey, come on now. Wake up." Eleven-twelve-thirteen-fourteen-fifteen-sixteen-seventeen-eighteen-nineteen-twenty. Nothing. "Come on, come on, hey, wake up Six, wake up, I love you, I need you." Nothing. Nothing. _Fucking _nothing.

They wouldn't let him ride in the ambulance, which Tim thought was bordering on pointless—Jason was _dead_, the paramedics had declared him dead on scene—so it wasn't like they had to protect _him. _Instead, he had to ride in the back of a police car, hysterically sobbing, while they took Jason's body to the hospital.

The hospital's official cause of death was "sudden cardiac death caused by seizure", and a whole stream of people—doctors, nurses, psychologists, a pastor—came through the private waiting room to reassure Tim that there was nothing he could have done differently, that it wasn't painful for him, that Jason had felt very safe and loved in his last moments. The last thing he probably remembered, they said, was being told he was loved.

Somehow that didn't make him feel any better.

He would never really recover. Life would move forward and move him with it. There was work and the house and the land and Noah—Erin, God bless her, had asked him to adopt him after Six died so that he wouldn't lose out on his father figure—there was beer and there was football, there were people who cared about him, but the world had lost some of its sparkle when Jason left it.

He signed Noah up for Pop Warner in the fall after Jason died. On the first day, Noah didn't want to get out of the truck.

"Are you scared?" Tim asked, looking over at him—still like a little boy at 9 years old, but so much like Jason with his sweet face, his bright smile.

Noah nodded.

"Hey," Tim said, "Get out of the truck and listen up."

Noah obliged, shuffling his feet, staring down at his cleats, kicking at the dirt. Tim bent down to his level. "I know it's scary, and I know you miss Dad right now. I miss him especially bad right now too, but we have to do this for him, and for us, okay buddy? This is what you wanted to do, and I know it would make Dad so proud to see us. You aren't gonna get hurt, and you're gonna make Dad so proud, okay?"

Noah nodded, wrapping his arms around Tim's neck. "I love you, papa," he whispered, and Tim found himself swallowing back tears he hadn't expected.

"I love you too. Now go."

He couldn't bear to watch—not yet—so he drove down to the lake and sat there and cried and missed Jason until his heart hurt and his phone buzzed to tell him it was six o'clock and time to pick up Noah. He'd promised him burgers.

Noah was still on the field when he pulled back into the parking lot—just him and another little boy, standing shoulder to shoulder—Noah's close-cropped sandy hair and the other boy's longish, scraggly hair hanging around his ears shining with the late afternoon sun, the two of them with their heads bent down, sharing in some private joke, the start of a lifelong bond. Tim let his breath out. Maybe Jason wasn't gone after all. Maybe he'd been here all along, and this was his little message to them—_I'm here. I__'__m looking out for you. I love you_.

"I love you too, Six," Tim said aloud, and then rolled down the window. "Come on, boys, let's go get some burgers."


End file.
